Frederick Martin Reiner (also known as Reiner Frigyes in Hungarian) was an American conductor who worked with opera and symphonic music during the 1900s. He was born and trained in Hungary but moved to the United States in 1922. In the United States, he became well-known for conducting with several orchestras. His most successful time came when he was the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during the 1950s and early 1960s. He was born on December 19, 1888, and passed away on November 15, 1963.

Life and career

Reiner was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, into a Jewish family that did not follow religious traditions. His family lived in the Pest area of the city. At first, he studied law, as his father wanted him to. However, he chose to study piano, how to teach piano, and how to write music at the Franz Liszt Academy. From 1903 to 1905, he learned piano from István Thomán. From 1905 to 1908, he was part of a class where Hans Koessler taught composition. From 1907 to 1909, he studied piano teaching with Kálmán Chován. During his final two years at the academy, his piano teacher was Béla Bartók.

After working at opera houses in Budapest and Dresden from June 1914 to November 1921, where he worked closely with Richard Strauss, he moved to the United States in 1922. He became the Principal Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and held this position until 1931. In 1928, he and his wife became citizens of the United States. In 1931, he took the job of conductor for the Philadelphia Grand Opera and led the orchestral department at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Some of his students were Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, Max Goberman, Boris Goldovsky, Walter Hendl, Sylvan Levin, Henry Mazer, Howard Mitchell, Vincent Persichetti, Ezra Rachlin, Nino Rota, Felix Slatkin, Ethel Stark, and Hugo Weisgall. He removed composer Samuel Barber from his class because he did not have the needed talent. He left Curtis in 1941.

He conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra from 1938 to 1948 and made recordings with them for Columbia Records. Later, he worked at the Metropolitan Opera, where he directed a famous production of Richard Strauss’s Salome in 1949, with the Bulgarian soprano Ljuba Welitsch in the lead role, and the American premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress in 1951.

He also conducted and recorded the 1952 Metropolitan Opera production of Bizet’s Carmen, starring Risë Stevens. This performance was broadcast on closed-circuit television that year.

In 1947, Reiner appeared on camera in the film Carnegie Hall, where he conducted the New York Philharmonic as they accompanied violinist Jascha Heifetz in a shortened version of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Ten years later, Heifetz and Reiner recorded the full Tchaikovsky concerto in stereo for RCA Victor in Chicago.

Since arriving in Cincinnati, Reiner’s musical work had focused mainly on the United States. After World War II, he increased his activities in Europe. In 1953, he became the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

He performed with members of the Chicago Symphony in a series of telecasts on Chicago’s WGN-TV in 1953–54 and later in a nationally syndicated program called Music From Chicago. Some of these performances have been released on DVD.

From 1954 to 1963, he made recordings in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall for RCA Victor. The first of these recordings, of Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, was made on March 6, 1954, and was among RCA’s first to use stereo sound. His final concerts in Chicago took place in the spring of 1963.

One of his last recordings, released in a special Reader’s Digest boxed set, was a performance of Brahms’s Symphony No. 4, recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in October 1962 in London’s Kingsway Hall. This recording was later reissued on LP by Quintessence and on CD by Chesky.

On September 13 and 16, 1963, Reiner conducted a group of New York musicians in Haydn’s Symphony No. 101 in D major. This was followed by sessions on September 18 and 20, 1963, focused on Haydn’s Symphony No. 95 in C minor.

At the time of his death in November 1963, he was preparing the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.

Reiner was married three times (one of his wives was the daughter of Etelka Gerster) and had three daughters. His health worsened after a heart attack in October 1960. On November 11, 1963, while preparing for performances of Götterdämmerung at the Metropolitan Opera, Reiner became ill with bronchitis, which developed into pneumonia. He died in Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City on November 15, 1963, at the age of 74.

Repertoire and style

Reiner and his colleague Joseph Szigeti persuaded Serge Koussevitzky to ask Bartók to write the Concerto for Orchestra.

Reiner’s conducting style was known for being clear and efficient, similar to that of Arthur Nikisch and Arturo Toscanini.

Igor Stravinsky described the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Reiner as "the most precise and flexible orchestra in the world." This was often achieved through methods that some considered harsh, as noted by Kenneth Morgan in his 2005 biography of Reiner. Musicians from the Chicago Symphony have mentioned Reiner’s strict leadership style. Trumpeter Adolph Herseth shared with National Public Radio that Reiner frequently challenged him and other musicians during rehearsals.